Tender for a contract

You can find out about private sector contracts in a number of ways:

• building contacts with potential customers
• checking advertisements in local and national newspapers
• looking at advertisements in trade and professional magazines covering your area of business
• researching contracts outside your sector for potential secondary contracts - eg if a new office block is built, it will need desks, carpets, signage, stationery, cleaning and laundry
• following up press and other reports - a company may be expanding or sub-contracting part of a big order
• networking and picking up information from other businesses

You can identify public sector contracts by:

• Browsing online procurement portals - such as eTendersNI for opportunities in Northern Ireland, and eTenders.ie for opportunities in the Republic of Ireland. Read more about tender for public sector contracts in Great Britain and Ireland and tender for contracts in the Northern Ireland public sector.
• Reading procurement pipeline information - some public sector organisations publish pipeline information relating to upcoming tendering opportunities.
• Contact Innovate UK EDGE.

If you are interested in high value public sector contracts available in other European Union (EU) countries, you can search on the Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) website. This is the online version of the Official Journal of the European Union. It advertises all contracts worth over specified EU procurement thresholds.